Free Will

[iNow]

But your misunderstanding leads me to several observations. We view these two states as somewhat separate with the subconscious directing the conscious, but how much. Our breathing is subconscious yet we can control it at will if we choose.

Rubbish. Let's submit your claim to empiricism. Try holding your breath for 3 days and then report back to us your findings.

 

 

Was there an argument to poison?

 

I have mentioned general problems with neuroscience, I really didn't think it necessary to go further since they are on the wiki page that you linked and I presumed that you'd read it. Secondly I don't find any studies convincing enough to even warrant debunking in the first place, even the broadest definition of free-will is not going to include instinctive reactions.

Since you've merely evaded the core request and done a bit of hand-waving here, I'll just ask again, now for a third time... If you have a specific criticism to make of a specific study, then make it, but poisoning the well is a logical fallacy and not an acceptable form of argument.

 

Yes, there are criticisms on the "very wiki page" to which I linked. Those criticisms do not render the study conclusions moot, nor do they have any impact whatsoever on all of the other studies out there.

 

Casting aspersions toward the entire field of neuroscience does nothing to advance your claims or rebut those I've put forth. Would you like to try again, or are we going to just continue in circles where you evade the request and I keep asking you to support your position with a modicum of integrity and good faith?

Edited October 26, 2013 by iNow

[WWLabRat]

 

Look guy, I mention philosophy in the very post that you quote, philosophy is not a science.

 

In my last post I also point out that the critiques are on the very wiki page that iNow linked.

 

 

I wouldn't put instinctive reactions at the head of list of free will attributes, if you feel that that is a make-or-break criteria then perhaps you should look into the study. I certainly don't correlate flicking my wrist with any meaningful free will type decision, if you do then good for you.

"Look guy"?! This may be an internet forum, but you can still show some respect, even if you may not like me as a person.

 

Also, philosophy begat science. It's safe to say that science is there to provide logical and orderly steps that ideas, thought up under the umbrella of philosophy, should follow to validate. You said that the wiki article mentions many different points that could be attacked with the Libet experiments yet you have consistently failed to mention if any, none, or all of those are critiques are ones which you share. That I know of, no one on this forum is psychic and able to know what your stance is without you making it know. Simply stating that it's provided in the link doesn't add to the conversation, only adds to the post count and the time wasted to check the thread for updates.

 

I never said that it was a make or break, but reactions still are done on the conscious level.

[arc]

Try holding your breath for 3 days and then report back to us your findings.

 

Rubbish. Let's submit your claim to empiricism. Everyday someone puts a rope around their neck, slips off a chair and strangles themselves.

 

By way of your interpretation is that the subconscious trying to murder the conscious.

[iNow]

Using objective evidence, are you able to adequately demonstrate otherwise?

[Delta1212]

Solving puzzles like in chess or crosswords require problem solving. If our minds worked like computers wouldn't we always work out such puzzles in a consistent and predictable manner? How well one does solving such puzzles can depend on how tired one is, ones preoccupations while solving them, whether one has encountered a similar puzzle before, etc. I'm inclined to believe that if our minds functioned like computers and lacked free will, such issues related to variations in problem solving ability would not occur. An interesting topic for scientific investigation would I think be the connection between free will and pattern recognition as it pertains to recreational games and puzzles.

I don't think that computers perfectly correlate to the functioning of the human brain, which is a neural network, but that said: ever tried to do something on a computer while running a bunch of memory intensive programs?

[Bill Angel]

I don't think that computers perfectly correlate to the functioning of the human brain, which is a neural network, but that said: ever tried to do something on a computer while running a bunch of memory intensive programs?

Sure. Running memory intensive programs can degrade performance, in tbe sense of tbe application needing to take longer to compute the result, but the actual result computed, like the next move by a program that plays chess, should not change.

[arc]

Using objective evidence, are you able to adequately demonstrate otherwise?

 

Using the objective evidence you supplied I posited a hypothesis .

 

 

 

We view these two states as somewhat separate with the subconscious directing the conscious, but how much. Our breathing is subconscious yet we can control it at will if we choose. But then research shows the conscious as just an illusion.

 

Here's a good one; According to the research when you consciously decide to control your breathing it was your subconscious that ultimately made this decision.

 

I think this process may simply be that the subconscious is providing a "prompt" to the shared mind's conscious decisions that previously not long ago was considered entirely free will. My view on this is from an evolutionary why and how perspective. The need to react quickly to danger would seem to be a diver in this and a reason to keep the conscious from the initial but not necessarily the following portion of the process. An animal that shows any indecision in reaction to a predator will not likely procreate. A instinctual subconscious prompt of specific instructions to the conscious would give an edge for survival. An information packet, so to speak, of critical information.

 

Since the subconscious has always been there, it is the original "mind" after all, it possessed the compact thought process that would seem ideal to be refined through evolutionary means. A subconscious mechanism. I see this simply as a survival trigger device, and as the conscious mind grew the subconscious just continued its roll as a gate keeper. Prompting every thought in the unified subconscious/conscious mind, a stamp of approval if you will, from the original mind. This could be why the research shows the results that they do, a slight delay between the prompter and the prompted.

 

The popular assumption that the subconscious is in control of the conscious, that the outward personality of the person that we all see is not self determinant, and who's observed free choice is simply an illusion, seems to me a conjecture at most. I believe a practical study involving its origin in evolution would reveal an accurate and reasonable answer for this seemingly precognitive aspect.

 

The conscious and subconscious occupy the same mind, and are really two sides of the same coin, there is likely a remarkably simple explanation for this. Could there be a conscious superimposed by a subconscious with the subconscious quickly framing the context in a pre-conscious manner with the majority of the construct taking place in the conscious/subconscious mind, within the evolutionary context that I stated above. A means to quickly initiate a reaction to danger by not involving the more complicated and emotional part of the conscious/subconscious mind. This would seem reasonable considering as the human brain kept enlarging it still faced the same day to day dangers of predators. The evolutionary development of a quick precognitive subconscious lead at the advent of danger would seem a reasonable solution and undoubtedly advantageous to survival.

[iNow]

I'll take that as a "no."

[arc]

And from the link you provided as evidence.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

"It is worth noting that such experiments - so far - have dealt only with free will decisions made in short time frames (seconds) and may not have direct bearing on free will decisions made ("thoughtfully") by the subject over the course of many seconds, minutes, hours or longer. Scientists have also only so far studied extremely simple behaviors (e.g. moving a finger)".

 

A truly incredible volume of solid evidence of no free will. Your argument is without reproach!

 

And then there is this. Possibly revealing something about those who easily adopt this view foregoing some objective critical thinking. Again from the link.

 

"They asked their subjects to read one of two passages: one suggesting that behaviour boils down to environmental or genetic factors not under personal control; the other neutral about what influences behaviour. The participants then did a few maths problems on a computer. But just before the test started, they were informed that because of a glitch in the computer it occasionally displayed the answer by accident; if this happened, they were to click it away without looking. Those who had read the deterministic message were more likely to cheat on the test. "Perhaps, denying free will simply provides the ultimate excuse to behave as one likes,"

 

Ah yes, it's becoming quite clear. It possibly has to do with whether you view it from philosophic vs an evolutionary/biologic perspective.

Edited October 27, 2013 by arc

[iNow]

As I shared originally, the wiki link was just an overview and hardly the sum total of my entire position as you have treated it. I read your comment to me as a request for more information, and that's fair.

Since it's late I'm not going to dig into each specific publication for you right now, but I will start with these summaries and overviews that help inform my position (which I've already aggregated elsewhere so they're easy to share here):

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/yet-another-experiment-eroding-free-will/

In the last few years, neuroscience experiments have shown that some “conscious decisions” are actually made in the brain before the actor is conscious of them: brain-scanning techniques can predict not only when a binary decision will be made, but what it will be (with accuracy between 55-70%)—several seconds before the actor reports being conscious of having made a decision. The implications of this research are obvious: by the time we’re conscious of having made a “choice”, that choice has already been made for us—by our genes and our environments—and the consciousness is merely reporting something determined beforehand in the brain. And that, in turn, suggests (as I’ve mentioned many times here) that all of our “choices” are really determined in advance, though some choices (e.g., whether to duck when a baseball is thrown at your head) can’t be made very far in advance!

Most readers here accept that our actions are determined by our physical conditions—that there’s no “ghost in the machine”. Nevertheless, a large segment of those determinists also insist that we nevertheless have free will, with “free will” defined in various and contradictory ways.

Nevertheless, the neuroscience experiments are beginning to refute the classic notion of dualism: the idea that there is some non-physical part of our brain that can “freely choose” among different alternatives. And dispelling dualism has real implications for society—implications for religious dogma (much of rests on the idea that we can choose to accept or reject Jesus or God) and for the judicial system (if we can’t freely choose between right and wrong, the notion of how people are to be punished must be rethought). <continue reading>

http://neuroscientificallychallenged.blogspot.com/2008/02/can-neuroscience-and-free-will-co-exist.html

 

From a neuroscience standpoint, the answer might be a little more complex. As the food you ate for lunch became completely digested, the glucose and insulin levels in your blood began to fall. The lower blood insulin level was detected by your hypothalamus, which sent signals to various cortical areas (a vaguely understood process) providing the impetus to obtain food. The cortex then activated the basal ganglia, leading to the initiation of a motor movement (through the corticospinal tract), which carried you to your refrigerator.

A glaring difference between the two explanations for your behavior is that one involves choice, while the other consists of the perfunctory satisfaction of a biological drive. Do you decide it is time to eat, or do you feel a biological urge to consume food since your blood glucose levels have fallen and your body is in need of replenishment? Deciding to eat is reminiscent of a human action motivated by free will, while being biologically driven to replenish energy stores is suggestive of automatic, reflexive behavior we are usually more comfortable ascribing to drosophila or lab rats.

Of course in this situation the truth seems to lie somewhere in between. You didn’t have to get up to eat at that second (you weren’t starving), you chose to. At the same time it was due in part to your need to satisfy a biological drive. Other questions about neuroscience and choice, however, can get a little more difficult. <continue reading>

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/the-survival-value-of-8216free-will/11622

 

One of the surprising effects of the increasing availability of tools for peering inside the brain as thoughts occur has been a gradual mainstreaming of the idea that free will is an illusion. Briefly, as articulated my materialists and determinists, the idea is that if everything we think and do is a product of our physical substrate — indeed, if all we are is that physical substrate — it’s self-evident that our choices are pre-determined.

There are multiple lines of evidence to suggest this is true. We initiate actions before we are conscious of them. Many physicists argue that there is no such thing as time, i.e., that everything that has ever happened exists already, in what is actually a completely static universe. So we are merely moving along the dimension of time in what appears to be only one direction, playing out “the future” as surely as a player piano reels through a punched tape.

So why then do we believe in free will?

It’s simple: if we didn’t, we’d all die a lot sooner. There are countless other examples of this phenomenon. They are powerful cognitive illusions that have survival value, such as patternicity and agenticity, which have been eloquently described in Scientific American by Michael Shermer. His core argument is that we believe in bearded sky dudes and intercessory prayer and all that because the same underlying cognitive processes that enable those beliefs kept us from being eaten by predators...<continue reading>

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-01-01/free-will-science-religion/52317624/1

 

True "free will," then, would require us to somehow step outside of our brain's structure and modify how it works. Science hasn't shown any way we can do this because "we" are simply constructs of our brain. We can't impose a nebulous "will" on the inputs to our brain that can affect its output of decisions and actions, any more than a programmed computer can somehow reach inside itself and change its program.

And that's what neurobiology is telling us: Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject "decides" to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. (These studies use crude imaging techniques based on blood flow, and I suspect that future understanding of the brain will allow us to predict many of our decisions far earlier than seven seconds in advance.) "Decisions" made like that aren't conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we've made them, then we don't have free will in any meaningful sense.

Psychologists and neuroscientists are also showing that the experience of will itself could be an illusion that evolution has given us to connect our thoughts, which stem from unconscious processes, and our actions, which also stem from unconscious process. We think this because our sense of "willing" an act can be changed, created, or even eliminated through brain stimulation, mental illness, or psychological experiments. The ineluctable scientific conclusion is that although we feel that we're characters in the play of our lives, rewriting our parts as we go along, in reality we're puppets performing scripted parts written by the laws of physics.

Most people find that idea intolerable, so powerful is our illusion that we really do make choices.... <continue reading>

 

And a nice piece from Victor Stenger on the subject:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/free-will-is-an-illusion_b_1562533.html

 

Research in neuroscience has revealed a startling fact that revolutionizes much of what we humans have previously taken for granted about our interactions with the world outside our heads: Our consciousness is really not in charge of our behavior.

<...>

And that's what it all boils down to. Who cares whether we call an action "free will" or not? Calling it "free will" (as compatibilists do) is too confusing, since it suggests some form of dualism, supernatural or not; so let's call it "autonomy." The issue is: what is the moral and legal responsibility of an autonomous person, and how should society deal with wrongdoing? ... <continue reading>

 

Sam Harris also receives a lot of criticism on this subject ever since his book on Free Will (which is another good read that I'd recommend), and he responds thusly:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/life-without-free-will

One of the most common objections to my position on free will is that accepting it could have terrible consequences, psychologically or socially. This is a strange rejoinder, analogous to what many religious people allege against atheism: Without a belief in God, human beings will cease to be good to one another. Both responses abandon any pretense of caring about what is true and merely change the subject. But that does not mean we should never worry about the practical effects of holding specific beliefs.

I can well imagine that some people might use the nonexistence of free will as a pretext for doing whatever they want, assuming that it’s pointless to resist temptation or that there’s no difference between good and evil. This is a misunderstanding of the situation, but, I admit, a possible one. There is also the question of how we should raise children in light of what science tells us about the nature of the human mind. It seems doubtful that a lecture on the illusoriness of free will should be part of an elementary school curriculum. <continue reading>

Along similar lines, here's a good paper that addresses one of the most common replies people have to these discussions about what neuroscience is showing us in context of free will:

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/GreeneCohenPhilTrans-04.pdf

Finally, there is the worry that to reject free will is to render all of life pointless: why would you bother with anything if it has all long since been determined? The answer is that you will bother because you are a human, and that is what humans do. Even if you decide, as part of a little intellectual exercise, that you are going to sit around and do nothing because you have concluded that you have no free will, you are eventually going to get up and make yourself a sandwich. And if you do not, you have got bigger problems than philosophy can fix.

A friend of mine at another site put it this way, and I quite agree with him:

 

"Recent findings from neuroscience feel as counter intuitive as a lot of quantum physics - one more limitation of our species that prevents us from seeing the world as it really is."

Edited October 27, 2013 by iNow

[arc]

As I shared originally, the wiki link was just an overview and hardly the sum total of my entire position as you have treated it. I read your comment to me as a request for more information, and that's fair.

 

Since it's late I'm not going to dig into each specific publication for you right now, but I will start with these summaries and overviews that help inform my position (which I've already aggregated elsewhere so they're easy to share here):

 

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/yet-another-experiment-eroding-free-will/

 

http://neuroscientificallychallenged.blogspot.com/2008/02/can-neuroscience-and-free-will-co-exist.html

 

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/the-survival-value-of-8216free-will/11622

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-01-01/free-will-science-religion/52317624/1

 

 

And a nice piece from Victor Stenger on the subject:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/free-will-is-an-illusion_b_1562533.html

 

 

Sam Harris also receives a lot of criticism on this subject ever since his book on Free Will (which is another good read that I'd recommend), and he responds thusly:

 

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/life-without-free-will

 

Along similar lines, here's a good paper that addresses one of the most common replies people have to these discussions about what neuroscience is showing us in context of free will:

 

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/GreeneCohenPhilTrans-04.pdf

 

 

A friend of mine at another site put it this way, and I quite agree with him:

 

"Recent findings from neuroscience feel as counter intuitive as a lot of quantum physics - one more limitation of our species that prevents us from seeing the world as it really is."

 

 

 

 

Everyday someone puts a rope around their neck, slips off a chair and strangles themselves.

 

By way of your interpretation is that the subconscious trying to murder the conscious.

 

So according to your evidence it means the subconscious can murder the conscious. So I guess the subconscious needs to work fast to pull it off. Maybe they do it when the conscious is unconscious.

 

This is a problem with your argument, the subconscious terminating itself and taking the unwilling conscious with it. Or is it a double suicide? Is the subconscious capable of this? I would think pretty big questions to answer before making a empirical judgement base on a finger movement.

 

No not convinced, I see what appears to be philosophical bias in this material you posted. And considering how little quantity there is in physical proof, this has a long way to go before it is more than simple conjecture.

 

"It is worth noting that such experiments - so far - have dealt only with free will decisions made in short time frames (seconds) and may not have direct bearing on free will decisions made ("thoughtfully") by the subject over the course of many seconds, minutes, hours or longer. Scientists have also only so far studied extremely simple behaviors (e.g. moving a finger)".

 

This is a different interpretation of an experiment from the same link you posted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

 

Daniel Dennett also argues that no clear conclusion about volition can be derived from Benjamin Libet's experiments supposedly demonstrating the non-existence of conscious volition. According to Dennett, ambiguities in the timings of the different events involved. Libet tells when the readiness potential occurs objectively, using electrodes, but relies on the subject reporting the position of the hand of a clock to determine when the conscious decision was made. As Dennett points out, this is only a report of where it seems to the subject that various things come together, not of the objective time at which they actually occur.

 

 

Suppose Libet knows that your readiness potential peaked at millisecond 6,810 of the experimental trial, and the clock dot was straight down (which is what you reported you saw) at millisecond 7,005. How many milliseconds should he have to add to this number to get the time you were conscious of it? The light gets from your clock face to your eyeball almost instantaneously, but the path of the signals from retina through lateral geniculate nucleus to striate cortex takes 5 to 10 milliseconds — a paltry fraction of the 300 milliseconds offset, but how much longer does it take them to get to you. (Or are you located in the striate cortex?) The visual signals have to be processed before they arrive at wherever they need to arrive for you to make a conscious decision of simultaneity. Libet's method presupposes, in short, that we can locate the intersection of two trajectories:

• the rising-to-consciousness of signals representing the decision to flick
• the rising to consciousness of signals representing successive clock-face orientations

so that these events occur side-by-side as it were in place where their simultaneity can be noted.

 

The others have similar counter arguments.

 

 

My first post on page 2 was in support of this notion of the unconscious driving the conscious.

 

Posted 24 October 2013 - 11:50 PM

 

I think it shows more than anything that our programming by way of evolution is driving our biological day to day existence more than our emotionally compromised consciousness. I would assume it had something to do with our ancestors preoccupation about sex or other social distractions, so much so that they did not see all of the predators sneaking up on them. Those with a good subconscious "Auto Pilot" would be directed to look around a little more often and benefit from their subconsciously derived precognition.

But reading the counter arguments from your link has convinced me that this subject is far from settled. With the possible bias involved I will need better evidence to to convince me this is more than what I stated above.

Edited October 27, 2013 by arc

[Villain]

Rubbish. Let's submit your claim to empiricism. Try holding your breath for 3 days and then report back to us your findings.

 

 

Since you've merely evaded the core request and done a bit of hand-waving here, I'll just ask again, now for a third time... If you have a specific criticism to make of a specific study, then make it, but poisoning the well is a logical fallacy and not an acceptable form of argument.

 

Yes, there are criticisms on the "very wiki page" to which I linked. Those criticisms do not render the study conclusions moot, nor do they have any impact whatsoever on all of the other studies out there.

 

Casting aspersions toward the entire field of neuroscience does nothing to advance your claims or rebut those I've put forth. Would you like to try again, or are we going to just continue in circles where you evade the request and I keep asking you to support your position with a modicum of integrity and good faith?

 

Another typical approach, when confronted that you are incorrect you pull the same lame 'fallicies' out of your armour. From your link:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

 

 

 

Despite his findings, Libet himself did not interpret his experiment as evidence of the inefficacy of conscious free will — he points out that although the tendency to press a button may be building up for 500 milliseconds, the conscious will retains a right to veto any action at the last moment.

 

 

 

Particularly in earlier studies, research relied too much on the introspection of the participants (other research shows that things such as introspective estimates of event timing are not accurate).

 

 

 

Many brain activity measures have been insufficient and primitive as there is no good independent brain-function measure of the conscious generation of intentions, choices, or decisions. The conclusions drawn from measurements that have been made are debatable too, as they don't necessarily tell, for example, what a sudden dip in the readings is representing. In other words, the dip might have nothing to do with unconscious decision, since many other mental processes are going on while performing the task

 

This is all from the link you gave in support of free will as a fallacy. Stop wasting my time.

[kristalris]

I agree that the Wikipedia link to free will is quite robust. However as stated earlier it of course depends upon the definition used and the norm you which to apply to the evidence presented.

 

I.e. you can use the definition at different levels / purposes and thus get different answers. For instance the use of free will is central to any legal system. That practical legal mind approach doesn't allow to use philosophy on that issue because the goal is to keep the order in a just way and using the concept of free will has been shown to work sufficiently well. So that proves that there is such a thing as a legal free will.

 

If you want absolute proof of the existence of free will then there is no proof either way.

 

If you want exact scientific proof of free will it can't be had at the moment because you will have to solve the question that Einstein and Bohr where on about whether or not God is playing dice. It hasn’t been answered yet.

 

If I’m not mistaken current science at the moment leans towards an intermediate position on the question if God is playing dice. I.e. we have at any given time a pre-determined begin state and a short time-frame after that a pre-determined situation that will involve an element of pure chance, yet baring impossible scenario’s in the future. It can either be cyclic or not.

 

If the definition you want to use is compatible with this, then you’ve got a free will taking this position. If it isn’t you don’t. The same will go for any other fundamental position taken on this.

 

Because I believe this indeed to be the case I believe that on a reasonable definition you can say we have a free will meaning that we are in fact self-programmable robots that seek an individual goal some of which say to live an as long as possible happy life (= getting dopamine etc. from brain) because to get this working together with others is required as is the algorithm of acting on free will in order to keep others from infringing on this common goal. I.e. whatever you do or don’t do your future is to a greater but not absolute degree uncertain. It is a game of probability management that you might call free will.

 

[hoola]

hello. Why anything? This includes such ephemeral things such as free will,along with matter / energy, etc....as a starting point, a theory of everything is a first step. Mine is information. The idea of the universe as a computer generated hologram from another universe is not a problem, the problem is.... who created the universe that these supposed aliens lived in? In the view of taking responsibility for our own universe, providing an "in house" theory and not using the typical dodges to avoid dealing with the question, I see the universe as mathematics itself, in the process of finishing an equation set that began as a process of informational evolution. This process culminated in the big bang, when informational derivatives became baroque enough to allow a complete description of matter, energy, fields, and the dimensions. The order of that listing has the dimensions as last as they provided the "vessel" (space) for all other descriptions to be expressed. Up to the point of the "release" by dimensionality, the singularity in "the void" was accumulating information. I call this an "informational black hole" Mathematics had to start somewhere and and I see it starting with a "one", a default minimum expressed as "one void". What is the usual description of the singularity? ....as a point...and what is the geometry of a point?...as sphere...and what is the relation of any sphere, regardless of size, to it own diameter/circumference? PI.....yes, and endless series of numbers, going on forever. A perfect supplier of any and all information.....this concept is a far-fetched extrapolation, but unless some divine creature zapped us into existence, spiritual or otherwise, (both dodges), some form of "how did something come from nothing?" must answered first by presuming a theoretical (mathematical?) existence supported by an equally complex logic-set. This logic set also having evolved in a pre-mathematical state arising from the chaos. This is my first entry in the site and don't want to overdue this rather wordy text...but I see how even free will is constrained by the mathematics of reality and that in turn is constrained by the dictates of logic....and up to this point, the great engine of mathematics has not fathomed the origins of logic, and that desire to know one's own origin is expressed in sentient beings such as ourselves, since we are a component of mathematics, as the desire that is driving and has always driven life on earth to struggle and evolve towards enlightenment....and the continuation of time itself towards this end.....next questions ..what is a point and how does that relate to dark energy? (what I call "nano-bangs")....... and is PI infinte?,,,,,,edd.

[hoola]

to go deeper into the specifics of the origin of free will, I postulate that the underlying logic of the universe limits what can actually appear in it physically or even intellectually by restraining what can appear informationally. It isn't hard to imagine it denying us flying pigs, or broken eggs that re-assemble themselves, but I believe the same limitations of the "informational well" can be applied to our most precious gift, that of thought. You might imagine you can think of any number of illogical happenings or perpetual motion machines, and that they are indeed, your own imaginary creations. I say any thought in your head or word out of your mouth, was constructed informationally in, and a component of, the theoretical engine of mathematics eons ago. Furthermore, (most) all information possible in this universe appeared within the original singularity before it was set free by the dimensions (big bang), or else it could not appear here and now. I call this my "law of conservation of information"(1). Now we certainly can think of new ways for flying pigs to look, and re-assembling eggs of a color or some other small detail being original to us, so isn't that a violation of my principle? No. All possible information was within the singularity. No matter how odd or supposedly new your flaming thought might get, was within the proto-universe's total informational content, both of logical and illogical halves. So we do have free will, but choice limited to the nearly infinite expanses of possibilities the universe was born with. You could live a trillion years and not run out of new, original material....accessing what there was 13 billion years ago. But, the universe is still cranking out new information.....the original PI did it's work, and post big bang, clones appears everywhere, spread out in quasi physical form as unrestrained informational generators...(hence, low level - no more big bangs, please) ...that are evidenced by expression by every (discreet) point in space putting out virtual particles, or "dark energy", which creates the fabric of space, and which seems to be pushing the universe apart. There is an intellectual component to this too...as new information is being added, so increases the vast informational possibilities of the universe's expression via your mind and others, perhaps even new physical factors. So, even if you could somehow achieve god-hood and know the entire informational content of the universe (shades of Kurt Godel), you would have to play catch-up forever as the universe continues it readout of the original algorithms, delivering new information at the speed of gravity all around you(via the clones). I use the "speed of gravity" as a euphemism of a very high rate....although that is something that has always puzzled me. Newton's gravity equations require an instantaneous speed for gravity....yet einstein says nothing can communicate faster than light in space....seem as bit of a problem there. I agree that gravity waves are restrained to C, but apparently not gravity straight line forces... but this is OT.... Everything I have just written and you have just read is chosen from a vast storehouse of knowledge, derived from information, and limited to the restraint of the law of "conservation of information", with it's open-ended, and all but limitless, machinery of mathematics, guided by logic, or else I couldn't write it and you couldn't read it. (1- the law of conservation of information has a caveat in that new information has been continuously added to the total informational content of the universe since the big bang, but a minor amount as compared to the original content, to the degree of insignificance)......edd

Edited November 28, 2013 by hoola

[too-open-minded]

Free will does not exist, it is certain and always present. It is the infringement of a "free will," barrier, or obstacle. That actually makes you think there is the concept of a "free will."

 

#Perception #Relativity #Swag

[hoola]

free will doesn't exist in absolute terms, you are correct in that assesment, however, we have as much free will as possible given the circumstance. These restrictions can be local, such as being in prison, or physically restrained, or global, and the limit is the minimum amount any sentient being is restricted to, that is by the "conservation of information" requirement as listed above. This goes hand in hand with the concept of reality itself....reality isn't 100% real, but real enough for the seeker of truth to proceed foward in the search for intellecual and spiritual enlightment. It is the car analogy...sure the car is sputtering and gets poor mileage, but gets you to the grocery store nonetheless, so you won't starve (evolution continues). Plus you had enough free will to refute my assertion that we do have some measure of free will, albeit in absolutist terms.... You don't have all the money in the world, right? This doesn't mean you have no money.....edd

Edited November 28, 2013 by hoola

[hoola]

I hope I haven't offended anyone with these rather obvious fake theories such as "nano-bang", "informational black hole" and "conservation of information"...including the moderators. I read the etiquite section and there seems to be some onus against putting out unsupported theories...of course I am only offering them as thought experiments, and as a means of addressing topics with raw logic, not scholarly reductionism and I have no math to support anything in regards to them. I hope they cause nothing more serious than rolled eyes and a "ooh, that poor man" or two. The tendency towards athiesm is inherent in my overall push to describe the universe's beginnings as cold, logical information. I feel that is perhaps the way the universe started, and emotion, feelings and all beings, flesh or spiritual, came later. Cold as an electron or warm as a kitten, all came from the same resevoir of information, logic being the one way filter that allows some things from the "well" to pass through to extant physical reality, while sequestering away thing that violate logic's strict regulations to an imaginary state of potential existence. Electrons and kittens are on the OK list..... But there is a fly in my ointment, in that ......if matter is a condensate of energy, energy is an discription from mathematics, mathematics is supported and allowed to function by logic.....what and how did logic get created? If , as I think, it rose up from "the chaos" from random associations of reduced entropic regions within the entirety of chaos, where did (the concept of) chaos come from? Is this the primary default minimum, with nothing before it to create it? If this is the irreducible minimum of our universe, then that leads to an admission of the concept of a divine being....Is David Mustaine correct in his assertion that "chaos rules!" perhaps more that he is aware? I see it as "chaos allows"...if it ruled , it wouldn't have allowed upstarts to appear(free will) in its domain, challenging this rule. Who knows, perhaps it has a sense of humour about the situation...if an advanced concept such as humour or empathy can be attached to chaos, then the idea of a "creator" looks more likely.....but if chaos can be attributed to have come from some more fundamental state ...then the question of the existence of a "creator" still remains......regardless of the existence of a creator or not, I see our universe as a random bubble of reduced entropy within a sea of self-negating chaos....edd

[AfterViewer]

Does free will exist ? Any ideas ?

Eroneous question. Does "logic" exist?

[ajaysinghgoshiyal]

If free will does not exist, then my brain is thinking and typing and my mind is non existent. If free will does exist, then my mind is thinking and making my brain do the typing.

[ajaysinghgoshiyal]

It is not apparent from such intellectual discussions as to why one would argue whether free will exists or not because in sum it is apparent that people here possess enough free will to write what they want to write. The mind has enough free will and more over the brain but not entirely so because the mind has programmed the brain since childhood to do what it wants it to do.

please look this up

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work/201005/is-free-will-real-better-believe-it-even-if-its-not

please look this up as well

 

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/26/book-review-obsessed/

[Popcorn Sutton]

 

 

Ok, I'll accept that about protozoa but not for Elephants, dogs, apes, whales, octopus, ect...

 

 

Morals are relative to the culture they exist in, animals display moral behavior in relation to their social needs...

 

 

 

 

What language? You have to be a bit more precise, why would thought require a language? I can see that communication between animals might require a language but internal thought?

Here's an argument that they use language. They don't have earlids that block out auditory information which work just like eyelids and work simultaneously with eyelids. Therefor, they need to make auditory information correlate with visual. It's a transformation of input.

Language is the interface.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Popcorn Sutton

[Moontanman]

Here's an argument that they use language. They don't have earlids that block out auditory information which work just like eyelids and work simultaneously with eyelids. Therefor, they need to make auditory information correlate with visual. It's a transformation of input.

Language is the interface.

 

 

That makes no sense to me, can you try to make it clearer?

Edited December 14, 2013 by Moontanman

[Popcorn Sutton]

Imagine if every time you opened your eyes, you also began to hear, and vice versa. The information would just be sight. Auditory information is nonexistent at that point because it's indistinguishable from visual information.

 

Because we don't experience vision this way, there is a dissociation between sound and sight. When you hear a loud bang, you ask yourself "what's that?" This happens before you start imagining what it is, and most of the time your imagination is barely, if at all, visual. Most of the time you'll carry on linguistically by saying something along the lines of "was that a gun?" ,"did something just fall?","that was weird." Etc. I'm sure a lot of people will verify this example based on their own experiences.

 

So therefor, language transforms auditory information to visual and vice versa. It's an interface between modalities.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Popcorn Sutton

[iNow]

Actually, it's all the same nerve cells firing according to the same underlying processes and biochemistry, just in different places and different patterns. Language is an emergent property, not a central one.